This is one occasion where I think it's particularly too bad that Tat chooses to draw Pebbles without pupils in her eyes. That strip would probably be several times funnier if Pebbles' eyes were expressive enough to give us a better idea of how she was reacting to what she was seeing.

Tat makes a point (no pun intended) of showing 'Nique hurting her foot on this arguably magical tree. Spends three whole panels establishing it. My initial presumption back then was that this would somehow overtly affect 'Nique, not entirely unlike the effect of a radioactive spider bite (sure, not a great analogy, but the first one that came to mind). Yet so far, the only direct effect we've seen of that moment is that it prompted 'Nique to tear off a piece of a shirt which left her with a bare midriff look which in turn gave Xanthe an excuse to stop and proclamate to her and for things to proceed from there:

Having checked through the archives to find this stuff, wow, I hadn't remembered how much more fun the strip was only a mere two years ago. And I'm not attributing the change solely to the Sisterhood's return after an absence of (checking) over four years and the subsequent "introduction" of The Patriarchy Matrix Thingamabob: